A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
—Tom Peters
Bosses: You make your living going to meetings. Hence any meeting that does not bubble and incite enthusiasm is a forever-lost opportunity.
—Tom Peters
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
—Tom Peters
Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.
—Margaret Cousins
Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow.
—Reed Markham
The great ages of prose are the ages in which men shave. The great ages of poetry are those in which they allow their beards to grow.
—Robert Lynd
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
—James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time
It’s better to not have a reputation than a bad one.
—Nic Pizzolatto
Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world.
—Charlie Munger
The author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the “innocence of eye” that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new… This freshness of response is vital to the author’s talent… But there is another element to his character, fully as important to his success. It is adult, discriminating, temperate, and just. It is the side of the artisan, the workman, and the critic rather than the artist. It must work continually with and through the emotional and childlike side, or we have no work of art. If either element of the artist’s character gets too far out of hand the result will be bad work, or no work at all. The writer’s first task is to get these two elements of his nature into balance, to combine their aspects into one integrated character.
—Dorothea Brande in Becoming A Writer
Because we are laughed at, I don’t think people really understand how essential [comedians] are to their sanity. If it weren’t for the brief respite we give the world with our foolishness, the world would see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of the lemmings. I’m sure most of you have heard the story of the man who, desperately ill, goes to an analyst and tells the doctor that he has lost his desire to live and that is seriously considering suicide. The doctor listens to his tale of melancholia and then tells the patient that what he needs is a good belly laugh. He then advises the unhappy man to go to the circus that night and spend the evening laughing at Grock, the world’s funniest clown. The doctor sums it up, “After you have seen Grock, I am sure you will be much happier.” The patient rises to his feet, looks sadly at the doctor, turns and ambles toward the door. As he starts to leave the doctor says, “By the way, what is your name?” The man turns and regards the analyst with sorrowful eyes. “I am Grock.”
—Groucho Marx in Groucho And Me
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
—H. L. Mencken in Minority Report